Sanctuary (Jezebel's Ladder Book 3) (10 page)

Someone slid into the bed next to
hers. “Display this image on the bubble overhead where the lens image appears
now.”

Mercy could hear several sets of
straps shooshing through the room, but no one spoke, lest they interfere with
her model.

“Draw a helix in tree green, that
one. Let the helix begin at the patio, here,” she pointed. “And end at the
nearest ground point, approximately here. Let the slope be approximately
thirty-five centimeters down for every meter forward.” Boom, a spiral line
appeared. “Narrowest edge facing the umbilical, and overlapping domino edges
two centimeters, show me a staircase following that helix. Display the count of
dominoes needed in the lower right.” The golden spiral appeared, but the two domino
counts differed by about twenty.

“Increase slope by one centimeter.”
Then the numbers matched.

Taking a breath, Mercy said,
“Implement this placement.”

Gleep. A yellow caution triangle
appeared.

“Show me my safe choices for
closest implementation.”

Three spirals appeared: steeper
steps with one rail seemed the best compromise. She selected it and then made
adjustments, reducing the number of tiles by eliminating the overlap. With the
excess, she built a few landings for resting places when carrying heavy loads.
Her third pass was approved by the interface, and she commanded it to move the
dominoes into place—in order, without collision.

Cachunk!
The room sounded
like a gymnasium where someone was pulling out bleachers. The command pod actually
shifted mountainward slightly as dominoes disengaged. “Out the window,” Yvette
whispered from the ceiling. “The tiles are swarming like hornets chasing
someone who kicked the hive. Arms from the saucer midsection are arranging them
all.”

The tuning-fork tone as each tile
snapped into place added to this hornet illusion. When the sound-effects
stopped, Mercy said, “Save this configuration as default helix. Show this
choice as an option on the exterior door control menu: English text, black, one
centimeter high. Label previous setting as default patio, same color and size.
Reset bubble display to lens view.”

She felt as if she’d been swimming
laps for an hour. The interface took a lot of concentration and energy. When
Mercy emerged from under the hood, she was hot and sweating. Her hair stuck to
the helmet and frizzed. The bright sunlight caused her to wince. Everyone on
the team was staring, either at the bubble overhead or her directly. Self-conscious,
she looked lensward and attempted to bat her disobedient hair back into place.
“What?”

Then Red said, “You kicked ass.”
She started clapping. Soon, the entire team gave her a floating ovation.

Everyone poured outside to see the
results. Because of her jelly legs, Mercy was the last person to reach the exit.
As she flew across the control area, her lab coat rippled behind her.

Red laughed. “Superwoman and her
cape.”

“You don’t like it?” Mercy assumed.
Girls at her school had been such fashion bullies.

“Just the opposite. My mom used to
wear one just like that.”

Mercy replied, “I know. She was one
of my heroes in science, and I gushed when I met her. Mrs. Hollis—your mom—gave
it to me at work as a welcome. She was very encouraging.” Opening the lab coat,
Mercy asked, “Would you like it as a memento?”

After a pause to process the
information, Red placed her hand on Mercy’s to prevent her from taking off the
lab coat. “No. She gave me billions. This is
your
gift, your memory.
Keep it.”

Mercy had been so worried about
pleasing Red the Impossible. This moment felt like the true welcome to her
team; however, the moment was spoiled by her view out the door. The steps
spiraled with precision down into the mist . . . but started a full meter from
the saucer door. “Oops. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s elegant. It reminds
me of a Gaudi staircase,” said Zeiss.

Red must have signaled for him
to be nice. This is so embarrassing.
“I can fix it while the campers get
ready,” Mercy said.

“No,” Zeiss ordered. “Let Park try his hand. Other people need practice with little changes. You freshen up and grab
something to eat. Congratulations.” He gave her a brief hug, and she was too
exhausted to tense up. The team had accepted her, screw-up and all.

When they were alone in the dining
room, Yuki told Mercy about the giant ramp visible on the outside of the
luggage room. “You could use it for your plan to bring the shuttle inside the
sphere.”

“That’s great, but we’d still have
to land the control room on the mountain every time. I’m not sure it’s
feasible, but when you’re looking at nukes, we might be willing to take a risk
on half-assed plans. Thanks for trying.”

“You can still tell Z about it.”

“
You
should tell the other
planners about the ramp yourself. This will prove to them you’re a team
player.”

“Later, when it’s not so busy,”
Yuki promised.

Within an hour, Zeiss watched the first camper descend
safely to the bog.

Herk complained, “Next time, don’t
put me down in twenty centimeters of mud.”

Zeiss said, “Mark a better spot, and
we’ll adjust the beanstalk. How’s the gravity?”

“About six-tenths of a g. It grows
stronger the farther down the steps you climb, but increases a lot faster
toward the end.”

“Twice as close to the mass
generator means you weigh four times as much. We’ll have an overlay of all the overlapping
gravity sources on top of the map that we’ll send you soon.”

“We need to invent compass
directions, too. Longitude and latitude.”

“Take it up with your wife. I’m
just the god of the sky.”

Sonrisa said, “I’d start latitudes
at zero where he’s standing. The river wobbles too much for a longitude marker;
however, that big lake on the other side has a single island in it. We can put
the prime meridian through the middle of that island, just like England.”

Red complained, “I wanted to name
it Wizard Island, like in Crater Lake.”

“First person who reaches a place
earns naming rights, but I reserve the right to veto anything too irreverent,”
Zeiss decreed.

“So I get to name a
swamp
?”
Herk complained. He took several minutes of splashing and grumbling in his EVA
suit before picking the landing point for everyone else. He said, “I’m no
expert, but I’m pretty sure I saw some fish.”

Finally, Herk planted a beacon the
size of a tent stake.

“Mark,” said Park as he made
adjustments. “Stand back.”

****

An hour later, all the campers had
reached the bottom along with the first wave of crates. “We’ll be back tomorrow
for another load, once we find a camp site.”

“This is paradise,” muttered Toby.
“Admit it, when we signed up for this space program, this is the kind of thing
we dreamed about. I’ve never seen this type of algae before.”

Yvette smiled at his boyish
enthusiasm. “I spotted a crawfish on the replay of Herk’s tape, and I make a
mean
étouffée
.”

Several of the men expressed
appreciation for the idea.

“Since there’s aquaculture, there
may be insects or predators,” Toby warned. “Let us know if you get bitten or
stung. Don’t be a hero.”

Rachael consulted the infrared aerial
map they made on the way down. “I haven’t seen any large birds. The creek leads
here, puddles, and where the bog touches the umbilical, vapor is released. I
assume the fog helps water all the plants. We’re still collecting data. We
should be able to follow the creek banks the whole way back to the source.”

“It’ll be less risky than tramping
through strange undergrowth,” Yvette agreed.

Toby examined the plants
surrounding them in the shallows. “This looks like wild rice.”

Rachael said, “That stuff rims
almost every lake in this hemisphere. If this is edible, someone planned years
ahead for us.”

“Maybe the aliens tried to
reproduce everything around the farm where they landed,” Yvette suggested.

“The rice is from a different
biome,” Toby noted. “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”

“Voice log everything,” Zeiss
reminded.

“Don’t worry,” said Nadia. “I have
the IR camera with the new buckyball battery pack. We’ll capture every bumbling
twig snap and Polish curse for posterity.”

“Hide under the mountain at the far
end of the ship, if you can,” Zeiss encouraged.

When the intrepid explorers were
gone, Red took her turn under the helmet. Park watched from his narrow control
bed but said nothing. Zeiss split his attention between his ambitious wife, Red,
and the display bubble. At first, nothing happened.

When Mercy linked in tandem, the
helix interface appeared.

Red suggested, “Maybe we have to
pull up the landing gear first.”

Zeiss hit the reset button for
them, returning the dominoes to their saucer-hugging position. Then Mercy was
able to summon a map of the solar system in order to demonstrate tricks like
rotating the view to the ecliptic, adding gravity funnels in blue, and drawing solar
winds in orange. Red practiced as her husband took audio notes and cheered her
on. Much less verbal than Mercy, Red breezed through the basics and moved on to
lens positioning. When she drew a straight line from the current location to
one in high orbit around moon base, the interface gleeped.

“Try curve splines like we do for
flight paths,” Park admonished. Although his specialty was star drives, he’d
worked hard with the team to optimize orbital approaches.

Red calculated minimum energy paths
in her head and sketched them in. The computer refined the model after she
finished.

“The space debris is moving in this
image,” Mercy observed. “The path is updating in real time.”

Park said, “Let me try something.”
Putting out his arms as if to push a boulder, he gave a slow, steady thrust.

All the side doors to the control room
closed. Zeiss said, “Caution signs are flashing on several panels now. The
indicator is moving along your selected route.”

“The lens is moving,” Red said with
excitement as she watched the picture in the overhead dome change.

Sojiro pointed down. “The shadow on
the floor changed positions. The whole ship is moving.”

Hearing this, Park pulled his arms
back until the motion stopped. He slid out of the couch, pale. “I could’ve
killed us all!”

“You didn’t. You made another
discovery. Let’s mix you some juice.” Zeiss helped Park to the dining room. The
Korean drive specialist was clearly drained from the exertion.

When the door to the mess hall opened,
Auckland was already inside, strapped to the back wall. Zeiss asked, “What
happened?”

“Gel-lined recesses were revealed
when the hatch slammed shut. I was investigating the alcoves when a force
slapped me into the wall face-first,” Auckland said, unwrapping his makeshift
webbing job. “I managed to turn and secure myself.” As he stood, the physician
said, “I don’t suppose anyone brought anything stronger than tea with glucose
powder?”

“Maybe Herk, but you’ll have to ask
him when I’m not around. I think he brought some brewer’s yeast,” Zeiss
confided. A buzz on his headset told him someone was trying to contact him on
channel two. “Speak of the devil. What’s happening groundside, Herk?”

“It’s a good thing this dirt is
soft—”

The men heard Red say the word ‘faster’
before the dining room hatch sealed itself again. “Brace!” Zeiss warned.

Auckland leapt back into his cushioned
wall unit. Zeiss slapped the woozy Korean against one gel pack while he tumbled
toward another. As he struggled to strap in, he could hear his wife’s typical
fighter-pilot trash talk. He switched channels with a click sound and squeezed
out the words, “Lower acceleration.”

Red heard him over the headset, and
when he could bear the weight, Zeiss said, “Better. Forces are dampened for you
in the center, but not for everyone else.”

Mercy whispered, “I told you not to
override.” More loudly, she said, “We’ll coast in gently at this rate. You can
plan the deceleration curve for your practice.”

“Roger.” Flipping to channel two
again, Zeiss heard cursing from several sources. “I hear you, campers. A few of
us flew across the dining commons. The good news is that Park and Red have
found the thrusters. Now we just have to figure out the brakes.”

There was grumbling until he added,
“That will be
my
lesson.” He heard laughter and relief. “Everyone okay?”

Herk complained, “I have a new gash
on my forehead, but it shouldn’t scar . . . too badly. Yvette twisted her ankle
and maybe her knee. Until we can carve a branch off one of those fruit trees
for a crutch, one of the men will need to help her walk. We’ll have to leave another
crate behind.”

“Roger. People first. We have years
to get your part right, but only a few days to figure our end. That will
involve a few mistakes. Over.”

“Just warn us next time. Campers
out.”

Despite his boasts, Zeiss’ efforts
were clumsy, and each manipulation took several tries. After the braking
maneuver was programmed in, he only lasted ten minutes. Using the control
helmet was like mountain climbing in thin air. Auckland ended the session when Z’s
medical readouts entered ‘dodgy territory.’

Zeiss stood, admiring his crude
sketch of the galactic arm on the bubble overhead while he sipped tea.

“Maybe it’s because we were born
with page knowledge and played with alien tech since we were little,” Mercy
said to salve his ego.

Red shook her head. “Don’t coddle
him. He’ll find his own groove. The machine will adapt to his methods. Z may be
slow and methodical, but he’s like a snowplow. Once he sets his mind to it, he’ll
blaze a path for all of us. I’d get us there fast, but most of the team would
be paste. We balance each other.”

The arm Zeiss had around his wife
wasn’t obvious until his wristwatch beeped. Then, he said, “Red, you show Lou
the interface while I watch moon base from the lens. Things should be getting
hot there about now. Can you zoom the image in on them?”

Sounding weary, Mercy pointed at
the ceiling bubble. “Snowflake, zoom on that location, factor of four.”

The bubble image obeyed.

Zeiss raised an eyebrow.

Mercy explained, “It’s best to
preface commands with a name so it doesn’t confuse other conversations or
swearing with orders.”

“You’ve named the most powerful
computer in the solar system Snowflake?”

“We all know who I’m talking
about.”

Lou rolled his eyes. “Why not
rainbow unicorn?”

Sojiro raised a hand. “No one’s
asking how she’s controlling the ship from outside the helmet.”

We’ve become like the Greek
demigods,
thought Zeiss.
Each of us with our own domain and powers far
above humans.

Yuki shrugged. “The computer can
read the nanochips in her fingernails and the broadcast from her headset. She
transferred some of the minor controls to fingers and voice.”

“Cool. Why?” asked Sojiro.

Mercy looked at Red, who told them,
“Z took so long on his intro lesson that she had to get up and splash her face.
It’s her third session in a row, and she’s seeing spots. I told her it was okay
to rest as long as she could help out when you asked questions.”

Further discussion was cut short by
flashes of light on the screen.